DHARMA, INDIA AND THE WORLD ORDER TWENTY-ONE ESSAYS i ii DHARMA, INDIA AND THE WORLD ORDER TWENTY-ONE ESSAYS CHATURVEDI BADRINATH iii Copyright 1993 by Chaturvedi Badrinath First published 1993 by Pahl-Rugenstein and Saint Andrew Press. Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag Nachfolger GmbH BreiteStr.47 D-53111 Bonn Tel (0228) 63 23 06 Fax (0228) 63 49 68 Bundesrepublik Deutschland ISBN 3-89144-179-7 Saint Andrew Press 121 George Street Edinburgh EH2 4YN Scotland, UK Tel (031) 22 55 72 2 Fax (031) 22 03 113 ISBN 0-86513-172-8 Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Badrinath, Chaturvedi: Dharma, India, and the world order: twenty-one essays Chaturvedi Badrinath. - Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press; Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1993 ISBN 3-89144-179-7 (Pahl-Rugenstein) ISBN 0-86153-172-8 (Saint Andrew Press) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Tulika Print Communication Services Pvt. Ltd. C-20, Qutab Institutional Area, New Delhi 110016 Printed in Hungary by Interpress iv To Bishop Lesslie Newbigin To whose friendship I owe much v vi CONTENTS Foreword ix Preface xv Acknowledgements xvii To the Reader xxv An Outline of the Inquiry and Arguments in the Twenty-one Essays 3 Twenty-one Essays 1 Hindus and Hinduism: Wrong Labels Given By Foreigners 19 2 Search for Dharma: Problems Stemming from Travesties 24 3 Understanding India: Key to Reform of Society 29 4 Limits to Political Power: Traditional Indian Precepts 34 5 Dharma is not 'Religion': Misconception Has to Be Removed 39 6 Sense and Nonsense About the 'Guru' Concept 44 7 Resolution of Conflict: Potential of Dharmic Methods 49 8 Resolution of Conflict: Relevance of Age-Old Indian Values 54 9 Resolution of Conflict: A Method of Respecting Limits 59 10 Resolution of Conflict: Three Universal Disciplines 64 11 Region, Nation and World: Must One Negate the Other? 69 12 Region, Nation and World: Question of Man's Identity 75 13 Region, Nation and World: Principle of Diversity in Unity 80 14 Region, Nation and World: View from a DharmicPerspective 85 15 Region, Nation and World: Balance between Self and Society 90 16 What is Truth? 94 17 Plausibility and Truth: Mandal's View of Social History 98 18 Indian Nationalism: Borrowed Ideas, Ironies, Violence 103 19 Max Weber's Wrong Understanding of Indian Civilisation 108 20 Two Methods of Understanding: Western and Dharmic 129 vii 21 Modem Indian Perceptions of India and the West 151 British Attitudes and Aims: Their Framework 154 Indian Perceptions: Their Framework 161 (i) Westernisation or What is India's 'Own' 164 (ii) Gandhi 165 (iii) Muslim Perceptions 166 (iv) Christian Perceptions 169 (v) The Perceptions of the Depressed Classes:Phule and Ambedkar 175 (vi) The Non-Brahman Perceptions 181 (vii) Social Reform: Underlying Assumptions 185 (viii) Vivekananda: Vedanta and the Masses 201 (ix) Indian Marxist Perceptions: (a) M.N. Roy 210 (b) D.D. Kosambi 243 (c) Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya 257 (d) Indian Idealism and Realism: Misconceptions 263 (e) Indian Atheism Different from the Western 267 (f) A Marxist Trial 269 (x) Hindu Nationalism: (a) Madhav Golwalkar 272 (b) Deendayal Upadhyaya 303 (xi) The Two Jawaharlal Nehrus 316 (xii) Some Main Conclusions 328 Index 340 viii FOREWORD 1 am greatly honoured by my friend Chaturvedi Badrinath in his dedication of this work to me, and by the publisher in his request for a foreword. Badrinath and I have been engaged in intermittent discussions of a theological and philosophical nature for over twenty years, and although we continue to differ on fundamental matters, 1 have been both stimulated and enriched by these discussions and by the reading of his major work on Dharma which, regrettably, still remains unpublished. There is a particular importance in this work for readers in the West and not only for readers in India. Two great civilizations, the Indian and the European, have developed through millennia with very little contact. But the British connection with India over the past four centuries has deeply affected both. And yet, in spite of these four centuries of close contact, it is Badrinath's thesis that the two have never really understood each other. In these four centuries, and especially in the past two, powerful western forces have invaded India, their effects reaching to the remotest villages. Christianity, liberalism, utilitarianism, Marxism, together with western science, technology and industrialization have been powerful factors throughout these centuries. And they came not by a process of mere osmosis, but as part of a deliberate effort of the British people to 'modernise' India, to bring India into the mainstream of what was taken to be the world civilization. This invasion has released powerful forces in Indian life, many of them manifesting themselves in violent forms. And yet India remains resolutely Indian. And so, in a neat reversal of Marx's thesis on Feuerbach, Badrinath remarks that the West has tried to change India, but the point is to understand it. ix Ironically enough, misunderstanding has been multiplied by the fact that the leadership of Indian public life during the past century and a half has been trained in English, and English has been, until very recently, the main language of public life. Language inevitably provides the lenses through which one tries to see and describe the world, and the result has been that Indians have tried to understand Indian reality in terms of western concepts. Badrinath has an exceptionally wide and deep understanding of both Indian and Western thought, and is therefore able to move sure-footedly amid the tangled mass of confusion and misunderstanding which has characterized the attempts of both parties to understand themselves and each other. Badrinath takes it to be a fact that the confidence which the West had in the certainty of its beliefs has now almost vanished. I agree with him, and 1 think that this collapse of western self-confidence is one of the very important elements in the present world scene. One of the consequences of this collapse is the growing number of natives of the West who turn to India in the hope of finding salvation. This turning may be seen not only in the huge numbers of young people from the West going to India for shorter or longer periods, but also in the growing number of western philosophers, scientists and theologians who are exploring Indian themes in their search for reliable truth. It may also be seen in the high-pressure commercial marketing of Indian gurus in the West, about which Badrinath has some caustic remarks to make. But if the West is once again seeking wisdom from the East, it is all the more important that the search should be conducted in the light of the realities and not of the myths. Here, 1 think, the wide learning and sharp discrimination which Badrinath commands, can be of real service both to India and to the West. As words are tools for understanding, so also they can be potent instruments for confusion. Badrinath refers many times to three words which have had a prime role in confusing minds both in India and in x the West. The three are related to each other and their use mutually reinforces the confusion. The first of these words is Hinduism. There is not, and there has never been, any such thing. It is a word invented by invaders to describe what they wrongly took to be the religion of the people of the subcontinent. It is a word and a concept unknown to any ancient Indian writer. The second is the word religion. Indian thought, says Badrinath, has never acknowledged the existence of a thing called 'religion' a separate activity over against the whole of the life of the person and the society. And the third is the word secular. Like the other two, this word is also a foreign import. In the West it has a negative connotation: it refers to that which is against religion. But, says Badrinath, classical Indian understanding of the human condition was secular but not anti-religious. The key concept which will enable us to grasp the truth about India and to unmask the confusions created by the other three words, is the concept of Dharma. Dharma is that which sustains life and order in all their forms, cosmic, human, animal and divine. It is a secular concept in the sense that it arises from no alleged divine revelation but from a study of the human person in all the dimensions of human existence (which are certainly not merely material). The concept of Dharma is not religious or anti-religious; it is secular. But, and here confusion begins to multiply even within India, the word Dharina has been used to embody the western concept of 'religion', and therefore secularity has been understood to be anti-Dharmic. But the confusion originates in the West, where the concept of 'religion' (from a Christian point of view a very suspect concept) was used to explain what the inyaders found in India. How can Dharma be made intelligible to the western mind? That is the problem to which Badrinath addresses himself. Dharma is inexplicable in terms of Aristotelian logic for it denies the dominion of the principle of non-contradiction. Every statement made about Dharma must immediately be supplemented by its opposite if xi misunderstanding is to be avoided. Aristotelian logic is exclusive. Dharma includes everything. It embraces the whole reality of what it is to be human (including its transcendent dimension) and therefore it is universal. Dharmic thought rejects all dualisms and embraces what Aristotelian logic calls contradictions as correlative elements in truth.